2. If the laws were changed to be more compassionate, would this in turn be viewed as permissive to younger teens from troubled backgrounds and instead turn them into targets by such organizations as their punishment would be less severe?

3. Assuming point 2 to be affirmative, wouldn't lowering the axe then open possible floodgates for more naive youths to be exploited by unsavory characters?

Just to state for the record that I'm not against your appeal, just that it leaves more questions to be answered and it would only be socially responsible to consider the consequences beforehand.

You asked: "What then is the appropriate punishment for Yong's crime?"

Simple answer: something proportionate to the crime he committed that takes mitigating factors into account. But why do you pose this question to the people who can identify the problem, but may not necessarily be the same ones who are equipped with the professional training to provide the solutions?

The people who have been tasked to provide the solutions are the ones currently employed by the PAP government.

I dare you to direct your question towards them instead.

Then you ask: "If the laws were changed to be more compassionate, would this in turn be viewed as permissive to younger teens from troubled backgrounds and instead turn them into targets by such organizations as their punishment would be less severe?"

Maybe it might.

But only by those intent on clinging on to their self-created delusion that the drug problem is caused by 'younger teens from troubled backgrounds': The Fascists.

Who till now refuse to acknowledge their own part in creating a society in which people are tempted to turn to drugs - and other substances - in the belief that it will solve their own problems caused on account of systemic reasons.

Fascists who are ever ready to point the finger at others.

But never themselves!

Why put the onus on the drug problem on these 'younger teens from troubled backgrounds'?

Finally, you said: "Assuming point 2 to be affirmative, wouldn't lowering the axe then open possible floodgates for more naive youths to be exploited by unsavory characters?"

You assumed wrong.

Back to the drawing board for you.

There's one major erroneous assumption you are making and that is that people who are against the death penalty are also deluded into believing that the campaign for abolishment operates in a vacuum. It doesn't. We believe that the only way for the drug problem to be brought down to a minimum - I personally don't believe that it can be solved in totality, and the fascists in power to do something about it have already proven that to be the case - is in a democratic environment.

An environment in which the maximum amount of participation in the political process is the norm, from which we glean the maximum amount of currently available information that will go towards problem solving.

Democracy, and the maximum participation possible in the political process, assumes that no one person has a monopoly in wisdom and knowledge; instead problem solving on a national scale requires that specialist knowledge comes from various quarters.

The people who can identify the problems are specialists in identifying the particular problem at hand.

Those who are tasked to provide solutions, and are paid to do so unlike those who identify the problems, have a legal obligation to provide the solutions, supposedly employed on the basis that they can.